Bombs
by Thereonly1Phoenix
Summary: Inspired by Faithless's song with the same name. Life can be cruel. Life can be beautiful. All you can do is hold on. Complete.


Hi,

Got this inspiration from listening to Faithless's "Bombs". check it out on youtube or something. watch the video as i think the music works well with it and makes all the difference. i just wanted to put Sesshomaru and Kagome together in a short chaptered section with each verse inspiring the next section. See what you think, i just wanted to point out that i wanted to fit Sesshomaru in situations that had effected other humans and see how he dealt with it. Don't take it personally if you don't agree with the events used but i feel these events are what made humankind bither weaker and stronger and we all react in different ways.

I was feeling a bit gloomy of late and the music and now this little story is just a reminder to me to perk up a bit.

I typed this quickly and there may be mistakes but i couldnt care less...sorry!

Dont owe anything to do with I nuyasha and i think you are all adults enough to not need warnings about this otherwise, grow up!

_We think we're heroes, we think we're kings  
We plan all kinds of fabulous things  
Oh look how great we have become_

_*****************************************************************  
_

He sighed. It was a rare action, just like the cigarette that still smouldered between his fingers. It was a reassuring trait he had picked up through the ages where one had to smoke to fully participate in society.

Cigarettes would never kill a youkai, not even after five hundred years.

He took a drag of the cigarette as the woman shifted restlessly before him.

They were in a small room which was Kagome's study, lined with history books of all nature. She had insisted he came back to her small flat, after all he was the only one from her past she had seen so far. She had seen him in the streets outside a museum where he had emerged from, looking like any member of the ordinary public. She could tell immediately he had some magic in use as her long out of use miko powers flared and he stared back at her, his disguise flickered before he frowned and awaited her to introduce herself.

He knew who she was.

And she knew who he was too.

"So where have you been?"

His white eyebrow quirked up as he took a last drag and stubbed out the cigarette in the palm of his hand before dumping the butt in the bin besides him, aware the action had made his watcher wince.

"Around." Was his answer, all too anti-climatic and one Kagome wasn't expecting.

"Are you the only one here?"

"No. The wolf lord and his mate are around who I believe you are acquainted to as are a few others of no consequence."

She fumbled for a moment and he knows what she was going to say. "What about...your brother?"

"I don't know. Haven't seen him for the past sixty four years. I last saw him in nineteen forty-five and I don't know if he is dead or alive."

She was quiet and pale for a long time. Her hand shook as she lowered the half full cup of tea to the table besides her. "If he is dead, what do you think killed him?" she half whispered.

"Man. The actions of man."

Her lips quivered and a stray tear fall down her cheek.

"So you're all that is left..."

"Possibly...of my father's bloodline."

"You never married?"

She saw that flicker of pain, and knew that the past several hundred years were long and arduous for the Tai-youkai before her. Whereas she read and lived a limited period of history, he lived through it and lived through what man could say were the worst of their mistakes.

He stood up and pulled out a wallet from his back trousers pocket and fished inside for a moment then handed her a business card.

"Call me when you next want to meet." He dropped his hand as she took it from him then picked up his coat and headed to the front door.

"Sesshomaru...?" she whispered, never moving from the chair in the study down the hall.

"...Thank you."

He closed the door behind him, knowing that he being here, alive in the modern world and minus his half-brother was more than a shock to her.

He could hear her sobs through the thick apartment door. Her wail echoed in his ears as he shrugged into the coat and exited the building.

* * *

_Key in the door, the moment I've been longing for  
Before my bag hit the floor  
My adorable children rush up screaming for a kiss,  
and a story, they're a gift to this world  
My only claim to glory  
I surely never knew sweeter days  
Blows my mind like munitions  
I'm amazed_

_**************************************************************************************  
_

He was married. He was travelling in Europe during the time when he came across a small pack of Inu-Youkai in France living in a village in the countryside. Despite them being the same breed, they were very different in many aspects and it was something he embraced for he found a little patch of home far away from Japan's shores.

She had darker skin than he did; tanned by the European sun and the days she was out with her siblings, looking after the harvest. Her hair was the richest brown he had ever seen and her eyes where green, a unique trait that belonged to her youkai linage. Her family very rarely changed to their canine beings for their magic were not strong enough but their powers were in the arts of healing.

He fell for her the moment she laughed at him when he changed into the great white dog he was.

They were married in the European custom, something he had no care for but it made her happy.

Her father and grandfather built them a small house in the village where the Japanese lord tilled the land with his bare hands, his white skin turned golden in sun and his wife grew plump with their first child.

They had two daughters in total.

Marie was the eldest and little Ai followed three years later.

He knew happiness, the lifestyle bought him peace and taught him lessons he would never had learnt in Japanese aristocracy.

The revolution was always in the background of their lives, occasionally the villages near them would be conscripted of their men and on the dry, dusty roads they could see columns of Bonaparte's men in French colours marching for battles beyond their green fields.

Never did they think it would touch them until Sesshomaru and his father and brother in laws returned from a hunting party in the valley nearby and saw their village in flames and pillaged by soldiers.

His wife was raped them killed.

His daughters burned in the fire.

And his heart died that day.

He watched her idly stroke the side of her now cold mug of coffee in the busy cafe they were sat in.

Her face had lost the rosy tint and was now grey. He knew she lost the colour when he told her of France, a country he now spends very little time in.

"I'm sorry," Was her words.

"It doesn't matter; it was two hundred years before you were born."

"Doesn't matter now does it? It could still be yesterday."

He raised one eyebrow, a sign she had learnt he was agreeing with her.

"I believe I am to extend my condolences to you as well regarding your grandfather."

She gave him a little smile, "Thanks."

They sat in silence, a great lord and a miko, watching the rain upon the window panes before them and the street blurred through the droplets.

"When did you come back to Japan?"

"After she died, I wanted to be home in a sense."

"Did you ever marry again?"

He shook his head, "I'm in no hurry. I have all the time in the world."

"Must be nice?"

He shook his head again, the human disguise he wore in public slipping enough to see his golden eyes burning at her.

"No it isn't Kagome. It is something even I have difficulty accepting. Your world constantly changing around you and you can't stop it."

"But was it all bad?"

A strange question.

He turned his head to stare outside at the world that was forever racing ahead of him.

"Not always."

* * *

_We're just children, we're just dust  
We are small and we are lost  
And we're nothing, nothing at all_

_****************************************************  
_

She felt lost.

Working as a curator in Edo-Tokyo's Natural History museum where the history around her was faded remnants of the past like her memories.

She felt him besides her; she could see his spectre in the glass before her. He must have came straight from work where she found out he was the owner of Tokyo's richest banking business firm.

His hair was white which told her he had lowered his disguise. Not that it mattered since the museum was closed and very few staff was around.

They both stood in silence before the glass case.

"He is dead then for he would never had let that sword leave his presence." He breathed as an odd pang of sorrow burned his gut. He could smell her tears beside him.

Tetsusaiga.

It's silent presence before them in the case as part of the new Feudal Japan exhibition, saying more words than they could.

"I feel so old." She whispered, "I have seen everything and nothing."

He said nothing knowing the feeling all too well.

"Can I touch it?" he asked after a while when she stopped crying.

"It's not my department and I cannot get in myself. Besides, you never could touch it could you?"

A sigh was her answer and she looked at him and smirked, seeing the old expression on his face he forever wore back when she was a schoolgirl and the well was open.

He shook his head free of his thoughts and looked at her in response.

"Well you look very smart Sesshomaru." She took in his appearance, his designer suit somehow suited the youkai marks upon his face.

He humoured her, the scent of sorrow didn't suit her. "What do you say to annoying my brother for one last time in his memory and let me take you out for a meal?"

She laughed and the sickly scent of sorrow was now gone.

"He'd be so pissed off with you right now." She accepted his hand and let him lead her from the past world of shadows and dust enclosed in glass.

She waited at the glass doors of the museum as he raised his disguise and she let him hail a taxi and whisk her off to some restaurant he chose.

She ignored the opulence around them, ignored the waiters and patrons taken in her work crumpled clothes and looked only at Sesshomaru, letting him order in the finest sake and together they toasted Inuyasha's memory under the dim city lights of modern day Tokyo, upon the land he once roamed.

She listened to him and she let him pay, something she normally protested to. She let herself soak up his presence, even his coldness felt so warm to him and his soul burned so very bright.

He took her home, back to her small flat and walked her to the door, something she teased him about. A great feudal warlord escorted a mere woman.

"But it's you Kagome." He smiled a rare smile, and she felt her heart burn, branding his words to her very soul and wishing she could hear them forever.

She smiled in response and went to thank him when she became aware how very close he stood before her. She could smell him, a raw smell of masculinity that she folded away in her senses.

Below her waist, she could feel his finger trace across the back of her palm, a slight quiver to his touch told her he was nervous and she looked up.

His eyes smouldered in the dim hallway lights, a look to them she never seen yet made her nerves in every inch of her body flare in response.

She felt his breath seer her lips before he lightly kissed her, his soft lips branding away the last trace of darkness.

"Goodnight." He breathed and stepped back, a small smile upon those normally cold lips then he turned and walked down the hall, his white hair was the last thing she saw in the gloomy shadows as his footsteps echoed out of her night to leave her sagging against the doorframe.

* * *

One bomb, the whole block gone  
Can't find me children and dust covers the sun  
Everywhere is noise, panic and confusion  
But to some, another fun day in Babylon  
I'm gonna bury my wife and dig up my gun  
My life is done so now I got to kill someone

* * *

She should have known today was a day she would remember for a very long time.

Sesshomaru was away in New York which was why he had to decline meeting up a week after their impromptu dinner where he kissed her goodbye.

She should have known that by turning the news on to see the twin towers aflame.

For a stunned moment she thought she accidently switched onto a movie when a dust covered reporter tried to frantically relay the news that two planes had each hit the towers in New York.

Her rare day off to luxuriate was soon forgotten.

She hurried to her mobile and rang Sesshomaru's number but it kept ringing.

As the towers collapse, it still rang.

As dust rose high in the New York skyline and made the day's light turn into dusk, it still rang.

And as night fell and the smouldering embers of the rubble lit the way for the massive overnight rescue mission, the phone still rang. It's soulless ringtone echoing across the world in the dead of the night.

She watched the TV all through the night, ignoring how her eyes burned with both tears and exhaustion. Anything in case she saw him on the news.

Anything to stay a wake...

Anything....to...stay..........awake.

It was the faint sound of the TV that woke her in the early hours of the night, already in New York it was morning and though the day out there has changed, the scene hasn't.

Smoke still rose from the scene of destruction as the camera panned across the faces of the weary faces of those trying to continue their rescue efforts.

A face made her sit up so fast, tiredness forgotten as she knelt before the television.

Sesshomaru though it was so hard to see. He was completely covered in black and grey dust and worrying his now grey and grubby shirt had blood upon it.

He was helping a woman in the temporary hospital that was apparently set up in a nearby church to seek medical attention and Kagome could only watch as the frail woman's bloody hands clutch at his shirt, smearing great handprints across his chest.

"Oh Kami!" she breathed, hysteria making the back of her throat swell up. She watched him wave over a paramedic, shouting something inaudibly behind the reporter.

She spied his phone attached to his belt and remembered, surging forward to the sofa where she spied it half wedged down the side.

She rang and watched the TV screen where the reporter droned on in the foreground, her eyes watching the Youkai standing behind her, watching his head whip down to look at his belt.

She watched on live TV Sesshomaru pull his phone out of his belt and answered it, his voice immediately echoing in her ear.

"Kagome?"

"Sesshomaru! I can see you on TV! Oh Kami are you alright?!" she sobbed, kneeling back down before the television screen.

She watched him look up and look around before his eyes settled on the camera past the reporter.

She watched as through the dust and blood, a small smile quirked on his lips, "How do I look?"

"Alive! Oh Lords! I thought you were dead!"

"It's good to hear your voice..." his deep voice made her heart swell as she interrupted him. "Are you alright?!"

"Yeah...it's hell on earth here Kagome."

The camera moved away to another scene, taking Sesshomaru away from her but she was content to sit before the TV, listening to his breathing over the phone with the faint noise of the hell he was in accompanying his voice.

"It's ok Kagome, I'll be coming home soon if I can sort out a flight."

And she believed him.

He was coming home.

* * *

_  
_

_So much heaven, so much hell  
So much love, so much pain  
So much more than I thought this world could ever contain  
So much war, so much soul  
One man's loss, another man's goal  
So much more than I thought this world could ever hold_

_****************************************************************  
_

It wasn't hard to miss him in the airport.

He was the only one that came off his private plane that night, wearing smart trousers and a shirt unbuttoned in such a way he almost appeared casual.

Even cleaned up from the dust of New York, he looked so tired and he must have been if his defence was down and she could see his Tai-Youkai markings upon his pale face. Dark shadows lay under his eyes and his hands were bandaged.

But he never looked so good.

His lips lifted upwards into the beginning of a smile as she moved towards him, clutching him so close and tight to her she could feel every sinew of muscle burning through his shirt and her jumper and imprinting itself through her skin, burning its way up her gut to her very soul.

She drew back to see his face up so close to her own.

"You ok?"

He stared back for a few moments then nodded, "I am now."

They were met and escorted to a waiting limo where Sesshomaru told the driver to take Kagome home first.

She watched him rest his head against the window of the limo, the silence of the road beneath them as his eyes closed and she knew he was now asleep.

Looking around, she spied a blanket of some luxurious quality folded on a nearby seat and she shook it out, resting it across his shoulders.

She watched how the street lights through the tinted window caused his silver hair to halo around his pale face.

The limo stopped and the door opened and he still slept on.

"Take him home will you?" Kagome whispered to the driver who sombrely nodded and quietly closed the door behind him.

She watched as the sleek vehicle moved off from outside her small home and could only felt relief he was safe.

She called him the next day to only have a member of his staff inform her he was away.

In France.

He passed on a message Sesshomaru would be back soon and he would call her.

A week later there was a knock on her door and that gut feeling told her it was him, and when she opened the door, she wasn't surprised.

As he stepped over the threshold into the cavity of her flat, she watched as his black hair faded to white and his gold eyes burned through his human illusion.

"How was your trip?"

"It was...peaceful...putting to rest a few demons of my own."

She didn't push him; silently making tea and watching him sit at the small table, feeling his eyes burning through her as he watched her move about the room.

"New York showed this Sesshomaru the ugliness of man. Yet it also showed me how humble and strong your kind are. Its ironic how you beings take and destroy with one hand and save and nurture with the other. You are destroying the very foundations you built yourselves and your civilisation upon. You achieve everything and yet nothing."

She sat across from him and pushed his cup towards him, he wrapped his huge, claw-tipped fingers around it and Kagome felt so feminine and small next to him.

"Why did you go to France?"

He closed his eyes and the kitchen was silence for so long Kagome thought he would never speak until he opened them once more.

"This Sesshomaru was afraid...of his past and the pain...he left behind there."

"And did you find what you were looking for?"

He nodded once, "Despite where my children and my wife are buried is now a city, all I had to do was walk the streets that lie across my old home and feel so at peace. This Sesshomaru isn't afraid no more."

"Even though life is cruel and yet so kind and is always so fast, all we can do is hold on and ride through it." Kagome tried to wisely advise but a small quirk on the ancient's demon's lips told her otherwise.

She smirked in response and stood up to take her cup to the sink.

He stood to and took the said cup from her grasp and lowered it to the table besides them. His eyes had that same look in them that night he kissed her and this time she was prepared. So prepared, she met him halfway.

His kiss was now so deep and desperate and all the loneliness Kagome felt from being on the other side of the well from where her childhood and her life once laid, burned away to nothing.

She moved her hand down his back, feeling his own pulling off her cardigan. Her fingers felt his warm skin above his belt and she felt him hiss, pulling back a moment to help her remove his shirt and then her own.

Skin to skin, she swore her very soul burned right that second as he moved her to the hall and rumbled in a very canine manner, "Bed?"

"Next door on the right."

The snap of her bra hitting the wall next to them was her answer as he lifted her around his waist, moving them to her bedroom.

The sheets felt so cool against her skin and above her Sesshomaru felt so warm.

Although it's been a while since she last slept with anyone, he made her react and move like it was so natural and together they burned away the last of the darkness that had haunted their every step.

* * *

_So much more than I thought this world could ever hold  
So much more than I thought this world could ever hold_

_************************************************************  
_

The news was bad, the reporter was sombre.

The recession was causing so many to go under, people were out of jobs and out onto the streets.

The war in Afghanistan still raged with more soldiers dying.

But a smile from her lips made it fade to nothing as he watched her cook up his favourite, Ramen. What used to be his brother's favourite food ironically.

His hair was damp and water droplets ran down his naked body until the white towel around his waist absorbed it.

"Go and get changed, dinner's ready." Kagome smirked, trying to ignore his nakedness but he knew she was aroused. He stepped behind her and wrapped his hands around her heavily pregnant belly and pressed a kiss to her exposed neck.

"Love you." He breathed and she smiled.

This world isn't so bad.

You just had to hold on.


End file.
